10 Tips to Make LinkedIn Ads Work for B2B SaaS

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Roman Krs

Over the past few years, I’ve helped dozens of B2B SaaS companies develop their LinkedIn Ads strategy. 

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Below, I’ll be sharing ten tips that I always give to my own clients, and that will significantly increase your chances of success with LinkedIn Ads 👇

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TABLE OF CONTENTS: 

Tip #1: Research Your Customers

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As a marketer, it can be challenging to fully understand your customers, especially since you’re not in direct contact with them. 

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In order to gain a better understanding, it’s a great idea to watch 3-5 sales calls, recommended to you by the Head of Sales. 

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Analyze how your sales team is presenting the product to make sure your messaging is aligned. 

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In addition to this, you can pull transcripts and summaries from hundreds of calls and have ChatGPT develop a content matrix and empathy map for you, summarizing the top pain points of your prospects. 

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Here is a templatized example of the outcome. ChatGPT can pull it out in this format based on the call summaries and give you a good foundation of commonalities for different prospects.

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Once you’ve identified the top pain points and topics with the help of ChatGPT, send them over to a few people on your sales team to validate them. It can be very subjective but can help you to ensure that you haven’t missed any important nuances. 

Tip #2: Define Your Targeting

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Next, define your targeting. 

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What job titles, job functions, industries, and company sizes do you want to target? 

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Once you’ve drafted your audiences, you can share and refine with your stakeholders. 

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To start out, you can use a simple targeting combination such as Job titles + Company Sizes + Industries. 

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If your audience is too small using only job titles, you could substitute for Job Function + Seniority + Skills. 

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A few additional notes: 

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1. Make sure to check the audience insights section of LinkedIn Campaign Manager to find exclusions that you could potentially make. (video walkthrough)

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2. If you have multiple personas, make sure to separate them into different campaigns so you can tailor your messaging.

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3. There is no ideal audience size on LinkedIn Ads – small audiences of 10K can work well and larger audiences of 100K can also work well. Start by targeting your ideal customers, and you can expand over time. 

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Recommendation: Use a validated company list for better targeting and reporting.

Tip #3: Distribute Your Content

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Once you’ve set up your audience, the next step is to distribute content towards them. 

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I highly recommend optimizing your ads for in-feed consumption – talk about the problems you solve directly in your ad copy. 

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This way, even if people don’t visit your landing page right away, they’ll still be learning about your company and can be retargeted later down the line with a more bottom of funnel offer. 

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Videos are a particularly great format for delivering these in-feed messages, and they also allow you to generate large retargeting pools. 

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When you run these ads, look at your impressions and views to make sure that you’re reaching your ICP. And check your engagement rate and dwell time metrics to ensure that the content is resonating. 

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Don’t expect demos or trials right away – the goal of these ads is to start generating some initial interest. 

Tip #4: Repurpose Your Content

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Do you have any great podcast or webinar clips related to your solution? 

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Has anyone on your team created a product demo walkthrough recently?

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Do you have any customer testimonials from recent events?

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This type of content can be easily repurposed for ads, and is great for both generating and capturing demand.

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Before you start creating new content, look at the content that you already have. 

Tip #5: Test Lead Gen alongside ungated content

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I know lead gen is an unpopular strategy, but it can be a great approach to run lead gen campaigns alongside ungated content. 

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If you’re getting leads from incredible people within your ICP, you can show that to your stakeholders as proof that you’re reaching the right audience, and this can help you get approval to run more ungated content. 

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I don’t recommend lead gen as a standalone tactic, but it can be a solid way to get some initial results and build your retargeting audiences, while also validating the quality of your targeting. 

Tip #6: Capture Demand With Retargeting

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On LinkedIn, lead gen forms aren’t just for content like ebooks and whitepapers. 

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They’re also great for capturing demo requests. 

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The benefit of using lead gen forms is that people don’t have to leave the LinkedIn platform to request a demo, so it helps to simplify the process. 

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To start, I recommend running these ads to your retargeting audience, since people who have already interacted with your brand are the most likely to convert. 

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Also, when it comes to these demo campaigns,  don’t be discouraged if you don’t see success right away. 

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In order to succeed, you need to test different types of messaging, different content, and different creatives until you find the right formula. 

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Another word of advice: Make sure you refresh the creatives in your retargeting audience at least once a month. Retargeting audiences tend to be small and have very high frequencies, so you may see signs of ad fatigue if you don’t refresh your creatives consistently. 

Tip #7: Use Text and Spotlight Ads

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Text and spotlight ads are an amazing and affordable way to stay top of mind with your retargeting audiences. 

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They’re very small and usually appear on the right side of the feed, and they get a ton of impressions but very few clicks. 

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I recommend setting these ads up with the website visits objective, so that you only pay when someone actually clicks. 

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Also, I recommend setting the lowest bid you can possibly set, along with a bid cap to avoid overpaying for clicks. 

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Another format to consider are follower ads, which are very similar to spotlight ads, but intended to drive more company page followers. This format is great for your colder audiences, and can help funnel your ICP into your organic audience for a longer term nurture. 

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You can use this template to draft the ad copy with ad specifications. You can also use dynamic macros in follower ads. 

Tip #8: Leverage your SMEs for thought leader ads

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If you have a founder or subject matter expert that’s active on LinkedIn, consider running their posts as thought leader ads. 

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Thought leader ads are great because: 

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1. They have high CTRs and very low CPCs compared to other formats

2. They allow you to get high-performing organic content in front of your ICP

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Customer stories and educational content related to the problem you solve typically perform well as thought leader ads. 

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I’d avoid overly promotional and generic, AI-generated content – you want to distribute content that’s memorable and valuable to your ICP. 

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For more thought leader ad ideas, check out 14 Powerful LinkedIn Thought Leader Ad Strategies Worth Testing. 

Tip #9: Set up the right tracking combination

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There is no perfect tracking combination, but you do have to make sure that you’re collecting enough data to understand what’s happening inside your account. 

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First of all, you can track online conversions, like form submissions on your website. Then, you can also set up conversion API to have a deeper understanding of which campaigns are turning into pipeline and revenue. 

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Also, make sure you’re using UTM parameters — it’s much easier now because LinkedIn has dynamic UTM parameters  — and pushing them into your CRM for full visibility. 

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And add “How did you hear about us” into your high-intent forms to capture additional insights about the sources that indirectly influence the prospects.

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Just by having these basics in place, you should already have a solid understanding of what’s happening inside your account. 

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If you want even more insights on which campaigns and ads are influencing pipeline, you could use a tool like Fibbler to look at multi-touch attribution. 

Tip #10: Make a commitment of at least 6 months

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If you’re going to get started with LinkedIn Ads, make sure you make a commitment of at least 6 months. 

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Once you have your audience, targeting, messaging, and content ready to go, you need to decide what your game plan will be and how much budget you need. 

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How much money will you need to generate awareness within your cold layer? 

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How will your retargeting audiences expand over time? 

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What metrics will you look at to determine initial success? Maybe reach and engagement as leading indicators, and conversions as a lagging indicator? 

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Present a clear plan to your stakeholders so that they know what to expect and are on the same page. Also, emphasize that success won’t happen overnight, and that it takes time and patience to start seeing results. 

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Hope you found this article helpful!

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Feel free to reach out on LinkedIn with any ad-related questions. 

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Roman Krs
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